“ I have drunk more than seventy cups of coffee in the past thirty hours, and this achievement deserves some small concession. Eight Oliver Sacks
“ I did much of my writing in a little alcove by the bar, where I could be alone, private, invisible, yet warmed and stimulated by the vivid life at the bar. Oliver Sacks
“ Harlan Lane and Franklin Philip have done a great service in making these so readily available to us in The Deaf Experience. Especially moving and important are the 1779 Observations of Pierre Desloge… Oliver Sacks
“ Even worse, this sort of pain had an affective component all its own, which I found difficult to describe, a quality of agony, of anguish, of horror—words which still do not catch its essence. Neuralg… Oliver Sacks
“ Dangerous wellness, morbid brilliance, a deceptive euphoria with abysses beneath – THIS is the trap promised and threatened by nature – in the form of some intoxicating disorder, or by ourselves in th… Oliver Sacks
“ Attacks characterised by little more than malaise are likely to be regarded as mild viral illnesses. Attacks characterised by alteration of affect and consciousness—mild drowsiness or depression—may b… Oliver Sacks
“ At worst, one is in motion; and at best, Reaching no absolute, in which to rest, One is always nearer by not keeping still. Oliver Sacks
“ As for sickness: are we not almost tempted to ask whether we could get along without it?’—and Oliver Sacks
“ And I myself was wrung with emotion -- it was heartbreaking, it was absurd, it was deeply perplexing, to think of his life lost in limbo, dissolving. Oliver Sacks
“ A ‘musical epilepsy’ or a ‘personal epilepsy’ would seem a contradiction in terms. And yet such epilepsies do occur, though solely in the context of temporal lobe seizures, epilepsies of the reminisce… Oliver Sacks
“ We may see very clearly how the wrong sound, or anti-music, is pathogenic and migrainogenic; while the right sound—proper music—is truly tranquillising, and immediately restores cerebral health. These… Oliver Sacks
“ Visual illusions, too, fascinated me; they showed how intellectual understanding, insight, and even common sense were powerless against the force of perceptual distortions. Gibson’s inverting glasses… Oliver Sacks
“ Ucho w liczbach: A youthful ear can hear ten octaves of sound, spanning a range from about thirty to twelve tousand vibrations a second. The avarege ear can distinguish sounds a seventeenth of a tone… Oliver Sacks
“ Tourette’s syndrome is seen in every race, every culture, every stratum of society; it can be recognized at a glance once one is attuned to it; and cases of barking and twitching, of grimacing, of str… Oliver Sacks
“ Though the tendency to tic is innate in Tourette's, the particular form of tics often has a personal or historical origin. Thus a name, a sound, a visual image, a gesture, perhaps seen years before an… Oliver Sacks
“ The situation changed for Michael and for millions of other schizophrenics, for better and worse, around 1953, when the first tranquilizer—a drug called Largactil in England, Thorazine in the United S… Oliver Sacks
“ The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic. Oliver Sacks
“ The periodic table was incredibly beautiful, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I could never adequately analyze what I meant here by beauty – simplicity? coherence? rhythm? inevitability? Or p… Oliver Sacks
